Financial Faux Pas

(This is a little vague. Sorry. I'm mostly just venting.)

We made a bit of a financial faux pas recently.

Actually, it wasn't recently, it was almost three years ago, but we're just finding out about it now, and our otherwise stellar credit score took an ugly hit.

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I didn't get mad when I found out. I mean, what's done is done. There's nothing we can do about it. There were no accusations, no I-told-you-so's.

At least not out loud.

But I DID tell him. I told I didn't want this come back to bite us later, and he said he was sure it wouldn't. He said he had done his research, he was absolutely positive that this was the way to go. So I trusted him, and we did it.

And we got bit.

I know The Agent is already really upset about this, so my two cents aren't needed at this time. And nothing has really changed, except I was hoping to buy a new car next year and I think that will have to be put off for another year. We still have good jobs. The house is still on track to be paid off by the end of the year. But now we have to build up our credit score again, and the only way I know to do that is to have credit, something we're not used to having.

If you know of another way, I'd love to hear it. But the only way I know, and this was confirmed by our financial advisor, is to get 2 credit cards, and use them. And it's not enough to use them and then pay them off right away (that's what we were doing before, and it didn't help at all). We have to use them, but not pay the full amount. We have to leave like $10 on there each month. And we can never max them out, we have to keep them within 75% of the limit.

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So, we decided to get a joint credit card, so we'll each have one, and I'll put all my gas fill ups on the card, and he'll put on every time we go out to eat. And when we pay it, we'll pay all but $10. The Agent wanted to leave $100 balance on there, but it drives me crazy to pay that much interest. If it was up to me, we'd only leave $1.

If we do this, hopefully our credit score will be back to what it was by the end of the year. So, we'll be debt free and have a great credit score. Go us.

Do you keep track of your credit score? How long does it take to raise it up again?